


Mary Sue's Metaphor Misinterpretation

by notorange



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Gen, Mary Sue, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-31
Updated: 2010-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notorange/pseuds/notorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a long and bloody war, Voldemort was at last defeated.  Mary Sue missed the excitement by 20 years, but a little time travel can fix that.  A shameless and self-indulgent Suefic.  Sorry.  Chapter Two: Oops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All Was Well

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted to FF.net, where the Suefic lives.
> 
> Very brief Teddy Lupin/Sue, not enough to warrant a pairing tag.

March, 2031  
United States of America

Mary Sue Potter pulled the false bottom out of the cupboard, and was startled by a large chocolate rabbit. Her cousin had obviously discovered this hiding place. Discovered it, claimed it, and decided to use it to hide sugar-free Easter candy. Mary hesitated, pushed the rabbit aside, and saw her notebook lying in the back. The spell sealing the notebook shut was intact, and Mary was contemplating the cleverness of charming the rest of her top-secret materials to be invisible and storing them in the ruined hiding place. Surely, anyone snooping around would think the candy was the only thing hidden here. But it was too late; a car had just pulled up the driveway.   
Dudley Dursley was home.

Mary stuffed her notebooks back into her bag. She'd have to stick them in the back of her underwear drawer instead, which felt much less important but was probably safer. Dudley was humming as he hung his coat in the hallway.

"Nice date, then?" Mary asked. Her cousin was home early, but it seemed to have gone well this time.

Dudley smiled distantly. "We're seeing each other tomorrow. The aquarium's doing a special exhibit on dolphins," he said.

All things considered, the years had been kind to Dudley. He hadn't gained back the weight he'd lost as a teenager, though he wasn't what anyone would call thin. At fifty-one, Dudley was solid, with a decent paunch, an occasionally ruddy face, and a full head of thick blond hair with only a few gray streaks. He managed a drill recycling plant and was usually more keen to watch television than do anything else on weekends, though recent romantic developments were beginning to take precedence. In the past thirty years he'd lost both parents, his aunt Marge, and his cousin Harry.

Mary had lived with Dudley for as long as she could remember, and was viewing their impending separation with anticipation and dread. She'd always been happy in Dudley's house, though they'd moved around a lot when she was little. These days they shared a three-bedroom townhouse near Boston, close to the university where Mary had earned a PhD in Theoretic Temporal Magic.

"And when do I get to meet this amazing woman?"

"Soon," Dudley sighed, settling in front of the television in the den. His eyes were dreamily fixed on an infomercial for a magical vegetable peeler.

"It had better be soon, I'm leaving in a week," Mary said.

Dudley frowned. "But you'll be back in April, won't you?"

"That's the plan," Mary muttered, thinking that if all went according to plan, she wouldn't be back at all.

"Plenty of time, then." Dudley's eyes were glazed as he watched a spokesperson shred a dozen potato skins at once. He probably didn't even realize what he was watching; after all these years, Dudley was still a bit spooked by overt displays of magic.

"Goodnight, Dudley."

"'Night," Dudley said.

Mary left her cousin to his post-date ruminations. She carried her full yet feather-light bag up the stairs, oddly disappointed that her cousin hadn't at least asked what she was doing at home on a Friday night.

Perhaps Dudley had given up on her, Mary reflected. It was a bit odd for a woman of twenty-seven to live with her family when she had the money and the means to move out after college, but Mary had never got around to finding her own place. Enough people in her life had left her, and she wasn't going to leave her only remaining family for an empty apartment. Mary's father, the famous Harry Potter, had died even before she was born. Mary's mother, Ginny Weasley (her parents hadn't gotten around to marriage) had followed Dudley to the States when she realized she was pregnant, and stayed long enough that Mary could just remember her mother's face. Ginny had left when Mary was very young, to fight and die in the war against Voldemort, like so many others.

The muggles found out, of course. A few important government officials had always known, but Voldemort's rise to power in Britain became impossible to hide after the Battle of Hogwarts. Civilians, both magic and muggle, were evacuated first to the continent, and then to the Americas, Australia, Africa, and Asia. Voldemort's power had grown beyond imagining, and he gave up all pretense of sparing the magically pure. Hundreds of thousands died, and by 2010 the muggles had had enough.

First, muggles tried for an assassination. They knew about horcruxes, but didn't quite believe such things existed. When none of their agents survived their attempts, the muggles turned to science. They had somehow got samples of Voldemort's DNA, and designed a virus to target and kill Voldemort alone. Unfortunately, like a bad sci-fi movie, the virus mutated. The resulting plague swept through Europe and North Africa, killing hundreds of millions, both magic and non-magic people, yet leaving Voldemort himself untouched.

Finally, the muggles gave up on subtlety and sent a nuclear warhead directly to Voldemort's stronghold. Voldemort was declared dead on May first, 2011. No body was ever found, but no living thing could be found within a hundred miles of the crater that marked Voldemort's last known location. Despite a vaccine eliminating all traces of the plague, Europe was now sparsely populated. The British Isles were still quarantined, twenty years after the war's end. Mary knew it wouldn't be easy to make it to London, but she couldn't save the world from Boston.

Like most great ideas, travelling through time to stop Voldemort's belonged to Hermione Granger. Hermione had made extensive notes on both of Voldemort's rises to power, on her own years at Hogwarts, and on the war after Hogwarts was lost. Information on known time travel spells filled two thick spiral notebooks. Hermione had made it her mission to know everything about the war and the events leading up to it, until she'd been killed while trying to sneak into the Ministry of Magic with Ron Weasley in 2001. Most of Hermione's research now resided in a corner in Mary's dresser, magically sealed and invisible beneath a pile of frilly under-things. Soon, Mary would leave all she'd ever known to fulfill Hermione's vision.

Mary sat uneasily on her bed, drawing her legs up to her chest. Hermione had seen time travel as a last resort, but she'd died before getting a chance to use it. Mary had found Hermione's notes years ago, and decided her fate at the age of thirteen. After years of hard work, Mary would be leaving Boston in just one week, and somehow packing wasn't something she needed to do until tomorrow.

* * *

Mary swore she was never flying coach again. Intellectually, Mary knew that flying in airplanes was a lot better than it used to be, especially with magic shields in place around the engines and the cabin so you didn't need to worry about dying in a crash. Airplanes were also much more comfortable than transcontinental portkeys, which had left Mary feeling sick for three days when she visited China on a school trip. But somehow the muggle-magic cooperation of the past twenty-five years hadn't included undetectable extension charms on airplanes.

Mary was squashed between two large tourists, and the teenage boy seated behind her had been kicking her chair since before they'd taken off from New York. Fortunately for the boy, Mary had been forced to pack her wand in her checked luggage. It was also lucky that the flight to Paris only took three hours. With effort, Mary concentrated on her laptop and fought the urge to practice her wandless hexes. The last thing she needed was to get into trouble with the French Magic-Non-Magic Cooperation Office.

Legend said that Merlin began life as an old man, and grew younger as time passed. Modern magical theorists held that Merlin's brand of time travel had such deadly side effects that no one besides Merlin had ever managed it. Of course, time travel spells were also extremely illegal, and the penalties for those found attempting it were worse than the side effects. Mary had told no one what she was up to, ensuring complete secrecy and that no one else need be in trouble were she caught.

Partial records of Merlin's spell existed, but the most complete of these had resided in the now-destroyed library of Hogwarts. The surviving equations baffled arithmancy experts, who insisted no one could calculate them fast enough for the time travel spell to work. The lists of ingredients for the spell's potion were all written in metaphors from a language no one had spoken in over a thousand years. The spell's many side-effects daunted most would-be time travelers; what good was travelling back in time when your memory didn't travel with you, and the price in years left you too old and feeble to do anything? But Mary knew she could do it. She'd been planning to go back in time for more than half her life.

The arithmancy equations were the easy part. Those experts who'd said the calculations weren't possible hadn't counted on computers. The field of Magic Computer Science was growing rapidly, and Mary was skilled enough to write a program that would take into account the particulars and vagaries of her arithmancy. Complex ancient metaphors for potions ingredients were a snap, when one had access to an internet forum filled with bickering linguists specializing in ancient Germanic languages. Memory loss went hand in hand with the years of life lost to the spell; all Mary had to do was cast a quick electro-stabilization charm before she downed the potion, and the contents of her brain would transfer without loss to her new, aged body.

Mary wasn't looking forward to being an old woman at the age of twenty-seven. She hadn't properly enjoyed her youth, having spent so many years deciphering ancient time travel spells and comparing them to tried and true modern methods. Mary knew she was uncommonly beautiful, with clear skin, brilliant green eyes, dark red hair, long legs, and fantastic breasts. Mary was also very clever, having graduated from the Salem Academy of Sorcery two years early, and earning a double undergraduate degree before attempting graduate school. Unfortunately, Mary had a large ego which negated many of her attractive qualities and made finding friends difficult.

Mary was just contemplating her own brilliance in writing an arithmancy subroutine for magicalculus when her laptop chirped and a little cartoon owl began dancing at the bottom of her screen. Mary clicked it, and found that Dudley had sent her a virtual postcard with a picture of a snail. She grinned, and began typing a reply.

An hour later, Mary was struggling through the crowd headed for the customs counter. Soon, Mary was free of the crowd and had collected her large, chartreuse suitcase. She was glad to slip her wand back inside her jacket sleeve, having felt bereft without it. Mary was just starting to look around for her contact, striding toward a large sign as though she knew where she was going, when a man with bright turquoise hair shouted and waved at her.

"Mary, Ma-rie! Over here!"

People were starting to stare. Mary flushed and changed direction.

"Mary!"

Without warning, he hugged her. Mary resisted the urge to hex him. Teddy Lupin was an old family friend, though they'd never met in person, and wasn't to know that Mary was unusually grumpy from her flight.

"Hello, Teddy," Mary said, withdrawing her suitcase from Teddy's ribs. "You're much louder in person than over the internet."

Teddy smiled broadly. "I'm much more of everything in person, if you know what I mean and I think you do."

Mary blinked. She didn't know what he meant, and was inclined to think that one of them was very confused. "So, I'm hoping that you know a way out of here that doesn't involve battling morning rush-hour into the city."

"Oui, madame," Teddy said, offering Mary his arm and flicking his wand at her suitcase. He steered her to an apparition point roped off from the general bustle of the airport. The suitcase floated along beside them. "Right then," he said, reaching for the suitcase. "My place?"

Next second, Teddy turned on his heel and pulled Mary after him. They disappeared with a crack and reappeared in a well-lit hallway. Teddy opened the door numbered 4B, and motioned for Mary to precede him inside.

"It's ... lovely," said Mary, lying. The apartment had large windows, bathing the sitting room in morning light. Elegant couches were arranged around a low table before the fireplace. The wooden furnishings looked antique, and Mary just caught the gleam of stainless-steel appliances in the kitchen off to the left. It really would have been lovely, if every elevated surface and a good portion of the floor weren't covered in untidy stacks of papers.

"My gran says the same thing," said Teddy. "Though she generally says it after she's 'cleaned things up a bit' by stacking up all my papers and ruining my perfectly organized files."

Mary laughed, feeling better than she had since before stepping on the plane.

"Now, for your accommodations."

Teddy showed Mary to a small bedroom off a hallway to the left. It had an ensuite bathroom and a window with a view of the building across the alley. Mary dropped her suitcase at the foot of the bed, and went to freshen up while Teddy made them both coffee.

"I feel almost like a person again," said Mary, draining half her cup in one swallow. "I think I hate airplanes more than portkeys."

"Shall we get down to business, or pleasure?" Asked Teddy, waggling his eyebrows.

"Pleasure?"

"You're in _Paris_, Mary. Art museums, great food, and I've got the day off work. I thought I could take you around the city, if you'd like."

Mary thought about it. She'd never been to Paris, and playing sightseer for a day sounded a lot better than pouring over her calculations again. "All right," Mary said. "Let's go to the Eiffel Tower first."

Teddy protested that the Eiffel Tower was just a tourist trap, but disapparated with Mary to the Champ de Mars anyway.

Mary did have wonderful time with Teddy, apparating to at least a dozen points in Paris. While the whole population of Europe had been decimated during the war, Paris seemed to have recovered completely. The city was alive with Parisians, pigeons, and tourists. Everywhere they went, there were at least a hundred other people milling around. They had just finished dinner, and Mary was feeling rather more cheerful than normal, thanks to the wine.

They walked slowly back to Teddy's apartment, enjoying the cool Spring air.

"To business?" Mary asked, after a lull in the conversation.

"Hmm," said Teddy.

"I know I've got to get up early tomorrow," Mary continued. "But I don't know what time the portkey's set for."

"8 o'clock," said Teddy. "And the return is for twelve hours later. You don't have to get up that early."

They dodged an oncoming group of teenagers, all wearing navy blue jackets and talking loudly in French.

"Seeing as my watch says that 8 AM here is the same as 2 AM at home, eight in the morning is sounding very early."

"Ah, but it's only ten. The really good clubs haven't even opened yet."

"No more," Mary groaned. "All I want to do now is sleep and not feel nervous about tomorrow."

Turning at last onto Teddy's street, Mary saw the outside of his apartment building for the first time. She was struck again by how _old_ everything here seemed to be, and how elegant the buildings looked. Most of the places she'd been to in America weren't more than two hundred years old, and tended to have been built in the 1970s. They paused at the entrance.

"How old is this building?" Mary asked.

"About eighty years or so," Teddy replied. "It was built after the second world war."

"I thought it was older," said Mary, peering up at it. She could almost feel Teddy's eyes on her face, and hoped she didn't look flushed.

"Still nervous?"

"I'll stop being nervous when it's done," said Mary.

"This time tomorrow, then?"

"By this time tomorrow I'll be in Greece," Mary lied. It wasn't that she didn't trust Teddy. If the unthinkable happened, if she were caught, only Mary would be held responsible.

"I can think of one thing that might distract you," said Teddy, winking. "No pressure, though." He turned, and went inside, leaving the door open behind him.

Mary looked down at her hands, thinking. She'd known Teddy for years, even if they'd met in person for the first time today. Very soon, Mary was going to be an old woman. And everybody knew what they said about Metamorphmagi. Decision made, Mary followed Teddy into the apartment.

* * *

Next morning, Mary awoke before the sun rose. She stumbled groggily into her bathroom, and revived herself by showering. By the time she emerged, fully dressed and packed, Teddy had already made them both coffee and breakfast.

When they had both eaten, and Mary was nursing her second cup of coffee, Teddy brought out the portkey.

"This is it," said Teddy. "Leaves in twenty minutes, assuming you still want to go."

"Of course I'm still going," said Mary. She eyed the portkey, feeling a familiar mixture of eagerness and trepidation. The portkey was a shiny metal disk with an "Official European Portkey" stamp on one side, along with a serial number and an "Unauthorized Use Strictly Forbidden" warning. Mary was relieved that it wasn't a smelly old piece of garbage, as most portkeys had been before magical society had reintegrated.

"It's just that it's very dangerous," Teddy said. "No one's set foot on Great Britain in twenty years and lived to tell about it. People have gone, but they don't come back."

"No one's likely to say they've been and come back if they get thrown in jail for admitting it," said Mary. "And anyway, I'm only going to be flying a broom over Scotland. You've done that yourself, haven't you?"

Teddy became very interested in the remains of his croissant. He muttered something that sounded very much like "twice."

"Then I don't see what the big deal is," said Mary. "I'll take the portkey to the Isle of Drear, take a broom around Scotland, not landing for any reason, and then the portkey will take me back to the Portkey Office in Normandy, and I'll catch another portkey to Greece. This time tomorrow, I'll be at the beach."

"If you get caught--"

"I won't get caught."

"Look, any big spells you cast while you're there will be noticed. It's fine on the Isle of Drear, because they don't monitor it closely. But on the mainland, the Ministry have got detecting spells set up so that any powerful magic that goes on gets investigated. You can't cast a patronus, and they say there are still dementors lurking around. You can't even apparate anywhere without setting off alarms," said Teddy.

"I know all that," said Mary. "I promise to be careful. But I decided to do this a long time ago, and I'm sticking to my plan."

For a moment, Teddy didn't speak. Then, "Fine, but if I don't hear from you after you get to Greece--"

"I'll send you an email," said Mary. "International portkeys make me sick. And what's with this sudden show of concern?" Mary's eyes narrowed. "This isn't some 'we slept together and now I must boss you around' guy thing, is it?"

"Can't a guy be worried about his old friend risking prison for a few hours of illegal sightseeing?" asked Teddy, trying to look charmingly wounded.

Mary rolled her eyes. "Be as worried as you like, but I'm going to be fine. But not if I miss the portkey," Mary said, as the portkey began to glow, signifying that there were only sixty seconds before it left.

Mary stood, pulling on her coat and then collecting her suitcase from the hall. Teddy stayed put, but Mary thought she saw his wand hand twitch. Mary picked up the portkey, and waited, feeling awkward. Should there have been a hug? Mary didn't know, and it would look even stranger if she tried after she'd already got the portkey.

"Thanks for letting me stay," said Mary. "And for the portkey," she added.

"No problem," said Teddy. "I'll see you in Greece, all right?"

Before Mary could respond, the portkey tugged at her navel, and she was gone.

* * *

Mary managed to land on her feet on the Isle of Drear, but immediately dropped to her knees and vomited her breakfast. Getting to her feet, Mary waved her wand to vanish the mess and rinsed out her mouth with a bottle of water from her pocket. She hated portkeys.

The place certainly lived up to its name, Mary thought. The Isle of Drear was covered in gray fog. The sun had risen over an hour ago, but it still felt cold. Mary looked into the dim sky, and was unsurprised to feel a light rain on her face. Luckily, the five-limbed man-eating quintapeds who lived on the island were nowhere to be seen. The Isle of Drear had long been made unplottable, to stop people from visiting and being eaten by the quintapeds, and no one ever visited, apart from zoologists who'd jumped through a dozen hoops to get clearance. Teddy only had a portkey to it because he had a few well placed friends in the EU's portkey offices.

"Lousy weather for flying," Mary said to herself. Turning to her suitcase, Mary cast a few detection charms of her own. Sure enough, there was a tracer spell on both herself and the suitcase. Mary tutted, and transferred both charms to the suitcase. It was rather perceptive of Teddy to suspect that she wasn't being entirely honest with him about her plans, but he wasn't in Mary's league when it came to spellwork. Mary pulled out her laptop and typed a quick "I survived! Meet for drinks on Saturday?" email to Teddy, and set her email provider to send it in thirteen hours. Mary planned to have gone back in time by Thursday, the day after tomorrow, and wasn't worried that Teddy would miss her.

Mary closed the laptop, and tucked it back into one of the magically expanded pockets of her coat. She knelt again, and opened her suitcase. It wasn't as neat as she would have liked, and Mary had to dig through a pile of swimsuits before she found her prize: a seemingly small black shoulder bag, also equipped with an undetectable extension charm. This bag held Mary's cauldron, the potion she'd been dutifully brewing for thirteen months, a small, already disillusioned and shielded tent, the notebooks holding Hermione's research, an illegal portkey, and a broomstick.

Mary loved to fly, but she found broomsticks cumbersome. The broomstick, a sturdy Cleansweep Seventeen, would be staying on the island. Mary extracted the broom and the illegal portkey and laid them next to her suitcase. The black bag went into another of her pockets.

With a tap of her wand, the illegal portkey glowed gold for a moment, then resumed looking like an ordinary pair of socks. Mary tossed it in with the rest of the clothes. Closing the suitcase, Mary laid the EU portkey on top of it, and cast a somebody-else's-problem charm around it to keep the quintapeds away. In twelve hours, the suitcase would vanish, appear in Normandy for five minutes, and then disappear to a locker in Athens. She was ready.

Mary stood, took a last look at the broomstick and the chartreuse suitcase, and concentrated hard. With a faint pop, Mary transformed into a peregrine falcon.

Naturally, Mary was an unregistered animagus. It had been a difficult spell to perfect by herself, but Mary had managed her first successful transformation when she was just fourteen. It had been another three years before Mary had managed to consistently transform with her clothes as well, so that she didn't have to worry about being caught naked and wandless. Mary was proud to say that she'd only gotten herself hospitalized once when attempting the dangerous transformation, and the doctor hadn't suspected a thing after reversing Mary's bungled spell. Mary considered herself to be quite lucky to have such a useful animagus form, and flew as often as she could at home. She'd never flown as far as she needed to now, but Mary had a few strengthening solutions tucked away, just in case.

With a final look around the Isle of Drear, Mary raised her wings, and flew high into the air. London was many miles to the south, and Mary was on a schedule.

* * *

Mary had been flying for nearly five hours and her arms were getting tired. Just when she had resolved to find a nice wooded area to rest for lunch, she saw it: high cliffs, a forest of dead trees, masonry tumbled along a brown hill, and a vast sandy crater that had once been a lake. This was where Hogwarts had stood. Mary circled the largest of the cliffs once, and landed lightly on human feet. All was quiet.

You'd never know this was where the greatest wizarding school in Europe had been founded, Mary reflected. All that could be seen of the castle were bits of crumbled walls dotting the hill. A single, broken column sat precariously at the edge of the cliff, as though a sudden wind was all that would be needed to send it to the sand below. Even the foundations were gone.

Mary turned to look at the once Forbidden Forest. Nothing moved within. The Battle of Hogwarts had left very few survivors, and Mary wondered morbidly where all the bodies were. The Resistance had lost the battle, and Voldemort's forces hadn't been known for cleaning up after themselves. The whole area gave Mary the creeps, and she resolved to find a place to rest in the ruins of Hogsmeade. Just as Mary began picking her way down to the sandy lake, a pearly white figure rose out of the ground before her. Mary stumbled once, but didn't fall.

"Hello," said the figure. It was the ghost of a young woman, colorless and translucent, wearing old-fashioned robes and radish earrings.

"Hi," said Mary, dearly hoping that the ghost wasn't part of a security system designed to keep out trespassers.

"It's been a long time since anybody visited," said the ghost. "Are you going to stay?"

"Um, no," said Mary. "I'm just passing through. I'll leave now, if you like."

"I'd like it if you'd stay. I don't get to talk to many people, you know," the ghost said. "I'm the ghost of Luna Lovegood, by the way."

"Really?" Mary asked, gaping a little. "I've read all about you! Though, I wouldn't have thought Luna Lovegood would choose to become a ghost."

"Well, Luna died very young, and wanted to know what it was like to be a ghost, able to walk through things and all. So she left a little imprint, and then went off to the afterlife," said the ghost of Luna.

"It's just--I didn't expect to meet anyone here, and you're _Luna Lovegood_, and it would be silly to ask for an autograph, wouldn't it?"

"I'm not Luna Lovegood; I'm the ghost of Luna Lovegood," the ghost corrected. "And I can't hold a pen."

"Oh," said Mary, feeling foolish. "Are there other ghosts here?"

"They all left. I think they've all gone down to the continent, but I like it here," said the ghost. "It's really lovely, and there are many creatures still in the forest. But I do get lonely, with no one else to talk to."

"Um, you're not here to prevent tourists and people from poking around Hogwarts, are you?" Mary asked, trying to look causal.

"No, but I do watch for visitors. Would you like to take a look around? The great hall was just over there; that's where I died," the ghost of Luna said.

"Sure."

The ghost of Luna grinned at Mary, and glided along a rocky slope to a large, paved flat space, about the size of a football field. Mary hurried after her.

"The walls are all gone, but you can still see the ceiling," the ghost said, rising a few feet in the air and then reclining, as though on an invisible bed. Her head was level with Mary's. "You haven't told me you name, but perhaps you are being secretive. My last visitor was secretive, too."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to keep it a secret. I'm called Mary Sue, or just Mary, really. 'Mary Sue' is only just for when there's another Mary in the room." Mary craned her neck to look up, but all she could see was sky.

"There aren't any other Marys here," said the ghost, now gazing at Mary with large, shimmering eyes.

Mary swallowed, and kept her eyes fixed on the gray clouds above. "I know the ceiling of the great hall was enchanted to look like the sky, but I'm only seeing the ordinary sky."

"You can't see it properly that way. It helps to lie back," the ghost said. The ghost of Luna floated close to Mary, and translucent hands suddenly gripped Mary's shoulders.

Mary gasped; the hands passed right through her, but were icy cold, and Mary flinched and fell back. But she didn't land on the stone floor. The ground had opened beneath her, and Mary fell twenty feet and landed on her back in a pile of slithering flesh.

"What," Mary started to say, but a lurid green snake, as thick as her leg, had already wound its way around her neck. The pit of snakes writhed beneath her, entangling her arms and legs. Mary flexed her wrist, trying to get her wand in to her hand. A slender serpent saw what she was doing, coiled around Mary's wand, and squeezed. The wand snapped.

Mary tried not to panic. Panicking never worked. The ghost of Luna drifted down, lying beside Mary. The snakes shrank from the ghost, rolling over Mary's legs instead.

"Luna," Mary wheezed, barely able to breathe. "Help--"

"I told you, I'm not Luna Lovegood. I'm the ghost of Luna Lovegood."


	2. Oops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a long and bloody war, Voldemort was at last defeated. Mary Sue missed the excitement by 20 years, but a little time travel can fix that. A shameless and self-indulgent Suefic. Sorry. Chapter Two: Oops.

Chapter Two: Oops

* * *

The ghost of Luna trailed a translucent hand over the snake covering Mary's neck. "You will stay, won't you? It's very easy. When you feel yourself beginning to slip away, hold on as tightly as you can."

The snake cringed away from the ghost's hand, and Mary was able to draw breath again. "S-stop," Mary said, her voice leaving her in a low hiss.

"A speaker," hissed the snakes around Mary. "A _speaker_!"

The snakes now slid over Mary's prostrate form, seeming to have exchanged crushing for caressing. Mary was glad to be wearing pants.

"Let me up," Mary hissed, and remarkably, the snakes obeyed. They slithered off Mary, and let her struggle to her feet. The ghost of Luna had disappeared, and Mary wasn't sorry she had gone. Mary was surprised to see that she hadn't landed in a pit, as she'd thought, but in a tunnel. Light drifted down from the gray sky, visible through a hole in the ceiling twenty feet above where Mary stood, but light was also coming from further down the tunnel. A flickering, yellow glow emanated from there, and Mary could see a few of the snakes slinking toward it.

Mary glanced at the hole in the ceiling. She should leave, now. Her wand was broken, and her plan had failed. The best thing to do would be to fly back outside, back to the Isle of Drear, and let the portkeys take her back to civilization. Even if she'd wanted to investigate the light, Mary wasn't fool enough to try it without a wand.

But Mary's feet weren't listening. Without her telling them to do it, Mary's legs were taking her along the tunnel, after the snakes. Something was calling to her, though Mary couldn't hear a voice.

She didn't have far to walk. In less than a minute, Mary found herself in a small, torch-lit chamber. There were more snakes here, sliding along the floor and still hissing quietly to each other. The walls were yellow in the light from the torches, and oddly lumpy.

Oh, that's where the bodies are, Mary thought stupidly, realizing that the walls were all bones, stacked and mortared. A skull stared balefully at Mary from across the room. A funny sort of table stood in the center of the chamber, with a pile of what looked like rubbish on top of it. Mary wondered if it was an alter of some kind, but then an enormous snake rose from the floor, and looked straight at Mary.

Mary didn't know what kind of snake it was. It was large, even bigger than the snake that had nearly strangled her, and silver-gray scales appeared to be molting from its ugly, triangular head. Gleaming red eyes met her own, shining with a malevolent intelligence most unusual for snakes. Ordinary snakes also couldn't rear up and look tall women in the eye.

"A speaker," hissed the snake. "Long has it been since any dared to enter my domain, and none of those could speak snake language."

Being a parselmouth wasn't something Mary liked to advertise about herself. She knew that her father had been one as well, in his youth, at least, but parselmouths still had a very bad reputation, even in the enlightened age in which Mary lived. The most well known parselmouth in recent memory was Voldemort, after all.

"As I can see that you don't like visitors, I'll just leave," said Mary in a hiss. She wanted to turn around, to run back to the sky, but again, her feet wouldn't obey her.

"Tell me, Mary Sue," hissed the snake. "What is your surname?"

"Potter," said Mary, and regretted it immediately.

"Potter!" said the snake, its wide mouth twisting in a hideous sort of grin. "How fitting, that it should be a Potter. You must be Harry Potter's bastard child."

Mary didn't answer. Strictly speaking, she was Harry Potter's bastard child, as her parents had never married. They might have done, if both had lived long enough, but Mary didn't want to explain that to the snake. A horrible, impossible suspicion had been growing in her mind.

"Harry Potter, who I, Lord Voldemort, killed," said the snake.

Shit, thought Mary.

"A worthy opponent, in his later years. But Harry Potter was never really a match for Lord Voldemort," hissed the snake. "After Potter's death, I was poised to destroy his followers forever. Until the filthy muggles released their plague and did it for me."

Never mind that there'd been a good seven years between Harry Potter's death and the plague.

"Great Britain was mine," said the snake. "Cleansed of the unworthy, by the very illness the foolish muggles tried to use to kill Lord Voldemort. Lord Voldemort cannot be killed."

"But the bomb," said Mary, finding her voice again. "They said the bomb had destroyed you."

The snake laughed a high, cold laugh that made Mary shiver. "Muggle weapons, destroy Lord Voldemort? I do not deny that I suffered a slight setback following that ill-planned attempt on my life, but I survived. My body was destroyed, and my great fortress lost, but Lord Voldemort has overcome such losses before. I traveled north, to Hogwarts, and called these serpents to me. Snakes have always followed Lord Voldemort's commands, granting me the use of their bodies."

"How could you survive?" asked Mary. "There wasn't anything left, even a horcrux-"

"Lord Voldemort has many horcruxes," hissed the snake.

"They said there were only six," said Mary.

"Ah, but you are well informed," hissed the snake. "There was a time when I only had six horcruxes, believing a seven part soul to be powerful beyond all others. But when a few of my horcruxes were lost, and I suffered no corresponding loss in power, I-reconsidered."

"You made another one," said Mary. "Before the Battle of Hogwarts, before checking on the horcrux you'd hidden there."

"Yes," said the snake. "I realized that Potter knew, and that safety dictated I take an extra precaution before returning to Hogwarts. A wise decision, and I made other safeguards against mortality after defeating Potter and his friends. My only regret is the loss of my ancestor's school."

Safeguards, thought Mary, surreptitiously glancing at the pile of rubbish on the table. It didn't look like it contained the highly valued, carefully guarded horcruxes described in Hermione's notebooks; there was a very battered and somewhat charred wizard's hat, an old gray cloak, a filthy, grime encrusted sword, and a bit of wood that looked very much like a wand. Mary's eyes snapped back to the snake's. A wand was exactly what she needed, but could she get past Voldemort? The snakes would obey him rather than her. Mary needed to keep Voldemort talking. Fortunately, Voldemort suffered from the monologing affliction that plagued so many supervillians.

"When the time is right, I shall build a new school, one which no mudblood will be permitted to attend. Salazar Slytherin's vision will be renewed. The whole world will fear to speak Lord Voldemort's name. But first, I shall need a new body." The snake shifted, and a few scales fell from its head.

Mary didn't like where this was going.

"I have waited for a score of years, and now, finally, someone worthy has chosen to aid me," hissed the snake, sliding closer to Mary. "That it should be the child of my old enemy..."

Mary tried to take a step back, but the snakes that had been slithering around on the floor had wound around her ankles. When Mary looked up from the floor, the red-eyed snake had moved so close that its flickering tongue was inches from her nose.

"Tell me, girl," the snake hissed, sending foul breath into Mary's face. "What do you know of power?"

The wand, thought Mary, I need that wand. Her own breath was coming in shallow gulps. "I don't know what you-"

"So very young," hissed the snake, gliding around Mary in a circle, trapping her with its long tail. "Lord Voldemort has not had such a young body in many years."

"You can't," said Mary. "My body, and you-I won't give you permission."

"Foolish child," said the snake. "I do not need permission."

The snake was hissing into Mary's left ear, and she couldn't stop herself from shuddering. "It won't work," Mary said, her voice rather higher pitched than normal. "I mean, you're an evil snake and I'm not, and I'm a girl and what bathroom would we use, anyway?"

"Lord Voldemort does not use public restrooms."

Mary couldn't see the snake, but her eyes were now fixed on the wand, sitting unguarded on the table. Only half-faking, Mary fell sideways, away from the snake, and landed heavily on its tail. The snake hissed in anger and pain, but before it could strike, Mary twitched her wand hand and thought _Accio_! at the wand. At once, the wand flew from the table into Mary's waiting hand. Warmth shot up Mary's arm, and before she'd thought better of it, Mary rolled to face the snake and sent a fiery serpent of her own from the tip of the wand.

The snake screamed. More fire-creatures erupted from the wand. Mary struggled to her feet-the snakes that had been holding her ankles had already fled-and ran as fast as she could back down the tunnel. Heat from the fire followed her, and Mary aimed a blasting spell into the ground, and shot up through the hole like a bullet. Fifty feet above the hill, Mary transformed into her animagus form and beat her wings furiously, fleeing the snakes and the fire. The brown hill where Hogwarts had stood now looked like a volcano, with fire and smoke spilling from innumerable fissures.

Mary had escaped from Lord Voldemort, but there was no way the Ministry would have missed that spell.

* * *

The sun was setting by the time Mary landed and turned back into a human. She'd flown non-stop from the ruin of Hogwarts, and recognized the overgrown city as Darlington from satellite photos. Small animals scurried in the undergrowth of the park where Mary had landed, though there was no sign of people.

Exhaustion slowed Mary's movements. She extracted her tent from its hiding place, and winced at the soreness in her arms. The wand she'd taken from Voldemort's chamber still warmed her hand. With a wave of the wand, Mary's tent snapped upright. The force of the spell made Mary's right arm tremble. Mary ducked inside the tent, trusting to the warding spells she'd already placed on it.

The tent was small, with just three rooms. Mary dropped the wand on the table in front of the sofa and headed straight for the bathroom. When she had finished, Mary reheated a frozen dinner, and ate hungrily. Fed and feeling comfortable for the first time since leaving Paris, Mary thought longingly of the bed in the next room. But she had work to do.

Dropping onto the sofa, Mary studied the wand without touching it. It was longer than her old one, looking to be about fifteen inches in length. The wood was darker, and Mary had felt that the spells she'd cast with it were stronger than any she'd done with her old wand. The wand seemed strangely familiar, as though Mary had seen it before. Mary pulled out Hermione's notebooks, and flipped through the third one. There it was, an illustration of Voldemort's wand. But unless the information was wildly inaccurate, Voldemort's wand was not the one lying patiently on Mary's coffee table. Voldemort's wand was nearly two inches too short, and much paler. Thinking quickly, Mary flicked to another page. The photograph of Albus Dumbledore smiled up at Mary, and the wand he held was a perfect match.

Could it really be the Elder Wand? Voldemort's own wand had likely been destroyed in the bomb, along with his body. It would be strange, Mary thought, for Voldemort to have chosen a random wand to lie beside his horcruxes. The other items on the table, dirty and shabby as they seemed, had to be horcruxes. Mary recognized Gryffindor's sword, and the hat was surely the old school Sorting Hat. The cloak, whatever its significance, might be one too. From what Mary knew of Voldemort, the man liked for his horcruxes to have a sense of history, for them to be treasures. The wand could have been placed because Voldemort knew he'd need a wand eventually, or it too could be a horcrux. If a live snake and a baby could house horcruxes, then a wand must also be fair game.

But if the wand did contain part of Voldemort's soul, it had a strange way of showing it. Mary recalled the warmth she'd felt when she first touched it. The wand had liked her, and the Fiend Fyre curse had been powerful, though Mary had never used it before and hadn't spoken an incantation. The wand had also been casting the curse against Voldemort, and if the wand were one of Voldemort's horcruxes, then it shouldn't have worked so well against him.

Mary picked up the wand. Again, it felt warm in her hand. Mary aimed it at her dirty dishes, abandoned at the counter where she'd eaten, and the dishes hopped into the sink so violently that the plate cracked. The wand definitely made her own magic more potent. And in the end, Mary didn't have a choice. She had to use this wand to perform the time travel spell.

Fiend Fyre made short work of horcruxes, but Mary knew she couldn't count on having destroyed Voldemort. Unless the horcruxes in that chamber were the last ones, Voldemort's spirit-or what was left of it-would be no worse off than before. Voldemort would lurk in some other dark place, waiting for one whom he could possess. One day, Voldemort would return. Decades of war and millions of lives lost would mean nothing. There was no way of knowing how many more horcruxes Voldemort had made, or where they were hidden. Mary needed to go back to a time before Voldemort had decided his soul could be split into more than seven pieces.

Mary started up her laptop, and opened the arithmancy program. She'd need to replace about half the variables, as the equations had been designed with Mary's original wand in mind, a twelve-inch sequoia with a Phoenix feather core. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

A chime from the laptop woke Mary in the morning. It had finished compiling the new set of equations while Mary had slept. Mary stretched painfully, her neck protesting at the position it'd been in for the past six hours, and her arms feeling like stiff rubber. Mary lurched toward the coffee machine, and spent the next twenty minutes thinking of which cruise she'd like to go on when she reached retirement.

Breakfast done, and a strengthening solution drunk for good measure, Mary arranged herself in front of her laptop again. Scanning the calculations, Mary thought they looked right. Not much had changed, but Mary knew she'd want to take another look at them before casting the spell. None of the spell's hard limitations had been altered, but Mary hadn't thought they would be.

It would save Mary a lot of trouble if she could travel back in time to when Tom Riddle had been a simple school boy, but Merlin's spell didn't give her that option. Mary could only travel back to the years between her parents' births and her own. This was an improvement in many ways over most other forms of time travel, which were limited to the caster's own life, and sometimes only let you go back a few hours at a time. There were spells that let you go back farther, but you only had a few hours in that time period. Mary didn't think she could do all she needed in the space of a few hours, and picked Merlin's spell because once cast, the witch or wizard would have until the end of their much-shortened lives to make changes. Ideally, Mary would arrive in the past before October 31, 1981, but the spell couldn't be cast that precisely.

Mary closed her laptop, reached into her black bag, and pulled out a large flask. The goopy, mustard yellow potion looked much as it had when Mary last beheld it. She still needed to add one final ingredient, sands of time. The only place Mary knew that had a supply of the sands was the Department of Mysteries in the old Ministry of Magic in London. Giving the potion a quick swirl, Mary put it back in her bag. London was over 200 miles away, and Mary knew she'd be flying more slowly today.

But first, Mary went back to the Elder Wand. It didn't feel strange or warm in her hand now. Instead, the wand felt much as Mary's old one had done. Mary aimed a spell the remains of her breakfast, and while the wand hummed with power, none of the dishes broke. Relieved, Mary set to charming, transfiguring, and testing the Elder Wand on all the furniture in the tent. The tent's wards were strong enough to mask the magical signatures created by these spells, so long as Mary didn't lose her head and cast Fiend Fyre again. Finally, Mary was satisfied. Spells cast with the Elder Wand were stronger than those cast with Mary's old wand, but Mary had adapted to it as well as she was going in one morning.

At last, Mary was ready to leave. Ducking out of the tent, Mary gladly turned her face toward the morning sun, which sent warm light through the boughs of trees in the unkempt park. But the sound of the helicopter sent Mary diving back inside.

How could she have been so stupid? Of course the European Ministry of Magic would be looking for her. Hopefully, Teddy hadn't heard about the little fire Mary had started in Scotland, so that the authorities weren't looking for Mary herself, but an unnamed sorcerer who hadn't lied to her family and emptied her bank account to get into England.

Mary knew that they couldn't see the tent. Her wards and shields were too good for that. However, it wouldn't take a genius to look at a satellite image of the area, compare it with real-time, and recognize the hole where reality didn't match the picture. It was only a matter of time before the helicopter zeroed in on the tent's position.

Mary risked a quick look outside. It was no good. She'd need several seconds at least to disassemble and store the tent, and even that small spell would be enough to broadcast her location. Using her wand to set it up last night was probably what had led the helicopter to this area in the first place. She couldn't keep the tent.

Thinking quickly, Mary went to the kitchen and added two of Dudley's old protein shakes to her pockets. Then, she aimed her wand at the sofa, concentrated, and said, "Portus." In a few seconds, the tent would be off the coast of Normandy and the helicopter would detect and trace the spell.

Mary transformed into her animagus form, and edged carefully out of the tent. The helicopter was flying low, and a number of small birds were darting from tree to tree, fleeing the noise. Mary flew after a small sparrow, which abandoned its perch in an old birch tree and fled obligingly out of the park. Mary followed, careful not to outpace the slower bird.

Next second, the helicopter also flew away from the park. Mary flew higher, abandoning her pursuit of the sparrow. For the moment, she was safe.

* * *

As the countryside turned from disordered fields to abandoned cities, Mary watched carefully for signs of London. At length, Mary saw what she was looking for: a very brown and very nearly dried up river, surrounded by a sea of half destroyed buildings. Mary's beady eyes caught sight of a large clock face, lying in a pile of rubble. London, at last.

Mary flew into the heart of the city, and landed on the edge of a vast crater. The underground headquarters for the British Ministry of Magic had once been here, and the residual magic clinging to the ruins made Mary's feathers stand on end. She hadn't realized how great the damage was. With luck, the lowest levels, the most shielded departments, were still intact.

Surveying the crater, Mary was relieved to see that the ground was broken in places, and deep cracks led beneath the surface. Though her last underground experience hadn't gone well, Mary flew fearlessly into a small opening.

It was a narrow hallway, blocked by rubble at one end. Mary transformed, trusting to the camouflaging effect of the Ministry's lingering wards. Lighting the tip of her wand, Mary hurried through the door at the end of the hall and found herself in a lobby. A large brass number seven hung between two old-fashioned elevator doors. The Department of Mysteries, level nine, was two floors below and hopefully less damaged than the Department of Magical Games and Sports.

There was something very creepy about this place, Mary thought as she picked her way down a flight of stone steps. Nothing stirred, apart from the dust Mary was trying hard not to disturb. The Ministry was utterly silent. Mary didn't need to do an 'Homenum Revelio' to tell that she was the person around.

The stairs ended. Mary pushed through the wooden door, thankful for the lack of cobwebs. She had made it into the Entrance Chamber of the Department of Mysteries. Mary jumped nearly foot in the air when the walls began to vibrate, and then groan loudly. Mary imagined the echo could be heard all the way from the river. If there were anyone or anything else around, they'd know exactly where Mary was. The room was trying to spin the walls, to disorientate unauthorized visitors, but someone had obviously anchored walls to floor, breaking the safety mechanism.

Mary picked a door at random, and heard the Entrance Chamber groan again as the door shut behind her. The room she was now in was long and narrow, and had a great deal of broken glass littering the floor. This was the wrong room, but Mary took another door at random rather than go back the way she'd come. No need to make a racket in the Entrance Chamber when most of the department's rooms were interconnected.

Two rooms later-one that looked empty, but was actually full of invisible objects that Mary banged her knees into, and one filled with large fluffy pillows-Mary found the Time Chamber. This was where Harry Potter and his friends had been at the end of his fifth year, and this was where the Ministry had kept its supply of Time-Turners, each containing a small measure of the sands of time.

Most of the Time-Turners had all been smashed in 1996, and with one thing and another, the Ministry had never gotten around to making new ones. The sands of time, however, were still here. Useless as anything other than an aide to deadly and illegal time travel, no one had bothered to loot them-Mary hoped.

The Time Chamber was undamaged, apart from a few scorch marks on the walls. Standing alone, in a corner of the room, as though someone had left it there by accident, Mary found her prize. It was a large, glass cabinet. An hourglass, four feet high and at least a foot in diameter sat within the glass. Sand swirled up and down the hourglass, moving independently of gravity. Mary tried opening the cabinet, but the handle sent a painful sting to Mary's fingers. It had been locked by magic, and a simple "Alohomora" wasn't enough to open it.

Mary walked around the cabinet, and used her wand to cut a large hole in the glass at the back. Certainly, she could have carefully untangled the wards and locking spells placed on the cabinet door, but Mary didn't care to waste any more time. Mary cast a levitation charm at the hourglass's top, and dipped a flask into the swirling sands. Returning the now full flask to her pocket, Mary repaired the damage to the cabinet.

Wincing again at the noise from the Entrance Chamber, Mary forced herself to ascend the stairs slowly. She was feeling giddy from her success, and doing a victory dance in the highly damaged Atrium was likely to result in a cave in. But as Mary flew out of the crack in the ceiling of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, her good humor vanished. The sunny sky that Mary had flown under to reach London had gone, and a cold, wet mist had replaced it. The cold seemed to reach deep into Mary's muscles, making it difficult to draw breath. This couldn't be an ordinary spring rain. Fighting to stay airborne, Mary looked down and saw them.

Dementors. About two-dozen skeletal figures, with dark, scabbed skin, raised their faces to the sky. They had no hoods or clothes, for both of these had rotted away. Mary had an unobstructed view of their heads, and watched them inhale, swallowing more than air.

Dementors didn't act like this in history books. Everything Mary had learned about the dark creatures told her that the behavior of these dementors was wrong. A two-pound bird was nothing to a dementor; the dementor couldn't sustain itself with animal emotions.

But dementors that haven't had any human prey in twenty years weren't picky eaters.

Mary faltered, losing altitude. Only the thought of her mission kept her flying. If she could just make it to the river-

Too late. Mary landed in a heap, fifty yards from the pack of dementors. She transformed, and it only made them advance faster. Raising her wand, Mary thought about how she'd felt when she collected the last ingredient for the time travel spell, and shouted "Expecto Patronum!"

A faint, silvery bird burst out of the tip of Mary's wand. If the dementors hadn't been so weak, it might not have worked. But as the dark creatures retreated, the patronus became more solid, flying around Mary in circles, driving the dementors even further back. When the late afternoon sun broke through the clouds, Mary let the patronus fade. The helicopter would be returning soon, and Mary was running out of time.

Mary changed back into a falcon, and flew swiftly over the river, alighting in the middle of an empty street that had no sign of dementors. Taking cover in a derelict shop, Mary got out her cauldron, her laptop, the potion, and the sands. Done with secrecy, Mary lit a fire under her cauldron, poured in the goopy, yellow potion, and set to stirring it with her wand in a figure-eight pattern. Laptop on and running the arithmancy program, Mary murmured an incantation in numbers as she poured a measure of the sands into the simmering potion.

The potion bubbled violently, threatening to spill over the cauldron's edges. Mary hoped that was what it was supposed to do. Extinguishing the fire, Mary watched anxiously as the potion stilled and shrank. The mixture had turned dark green, and a gold mist rose from the cauldron. Mary used her wand to coax the potion into a glass vial much smaller than the original flask.

The sun had begun to set. Mary shrugged off her coat, hurried out to the sidewalk, and began pouring the remaining sands in a circle large enough for her to stand inside. Little atmospheric details, like the sunset and the circle of time, felt hokey to Mary, who wasn't sure if such things were truly necessary for the spell or were just additions of overly dramatic sorcerers. But at this point, Mary was taking no chances.

Stepping into the circle, Mary used her wand to float the laptop at eye-height. With a trembling hand, Mary whispered _Cogitatio conglaciar_ at her head, and swallowed the potion in one gulp. Eyes on her laptop, Mary began to chant.

The numbers were changing so quickly that Mary was having trouble keeping up. A strong wind whipped Mary's hair free from its bun, adding to her difficulties. Was the roar in her ears the spell, or an approaching helicopter? Every muscle in Mary's body froze, and then spasmed. She had never known such pain.

Abruptly, sound and wind and pain all ceased. It was done.

The sidewalk was suddenly full of people. Dazed, Mary stumbled out of the way of the numerous and oddly large crowd. Something was wrong. The Elder Wand had disappeared. She'd shrunk, now swamped by her clothes, but she wasn't an old lady, shriveled by age. Her small, smooth hands showed no sign of age. Mary looked down; her chest had gone completely flat, and her shirt reached nearly to her ankles.

Mary Sue couldn't have been more than five years old, and she was all alone in 1980s London, surrounded by a sea of acid washed jeans and big hair.


End file.
